


in a life built around you

by verbanski



Series: daydreaming [2]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 11:37:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3172776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verbanski/pseuds/verbanski
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>nothing exists before and nothing else will come after</p>
            </blockquote>





	in a life built around you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kodakclick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kodakclick/gifts).



i.

There’s a corner apartment in an unassuming neck of Starling she keeps, or so she figures; at the very least, it’s as unassuming as any apartment complex can really get in the rather ill-fated city. She doesn’t truly have any reason to keep it but Nyssa has found herself arguing its usefulness as opposed to its uselessness more often than not.

(it’s on the top most floor, nobody bothers her, the roof is easily accessible, there’s a great view of the skyline, good vantage points – the list gets longer and longer each time)

Nyssa can’t find much harm in keeping something around that could potentially help the League out in some capacity, seeing as they have an odd penchant for assisting Oliver Queen more often than she’d like to.

She’s held the lease for the apartment for a little over a year, paid its rent for a little more. The place has been occupying a small part in the back of her mind since she first obtained it, though this is the first time she has ever stepped foot inside as its owner. Nyssa has returned to Starling City a handful of times before but she hasn’t made visiting it a priority for good reason.

Except, today is different because there was a little girl with bright blue eyes and long hair colored like sunshine that hits far closer to home than Nyssa is willing to admit.

When Nyssa agrees to talk business with Oliver over dinner, she forgets just how prone he and his band of makeshift vigilantes are to conflict and violence directed specifically at them. It’s almost like clockwork when Felicity informs Oliver of a crude kidnapping in the middle of their meeting and he offers to reschedule as soon as the matter is handled but Nyssa insists she accompany him. However cruel she may be, there is absolutely no way she would stand for a child being punished for the sins of grown adults who are too utterly moronic to solve their problems without using others.

She ends up at the apartment because she remembered the roof has a view and it’s quiet and she couldn’t breathe down on the ground, when skinny arms held her too tight and wouldn’t let go. The girl is fine, returned safely to her parents; the men who took her are no longer in any capacity to hurt anyone else. She succeeds in saving the girl but the guilt of something long past washes over her like she’s drowning out at sea.

Nyssa has only just come back in from outside when she can feel her lingering behind her from where she’s sifting through the various cabinets. It’s too good to be true so she ignores it, chooses to continue with her search for something that’s not canned spaghetti-o’s or ravioli.

“I don’t keep the good stuff here, you know.”

Usually, she manages to forge on until it fades and the memory is just a memory again but tonight her resolve is broken and she can still feel the small body trembling against hers, how her shirt is being gripped like a lifeline.

“I figured I might as well try if I was going to be here,” she answers for the first time because even her bones can feel how weary her mind has grown. Nyssa has always been weaker than she cared for when it came to her, not that it ever mattered when she was looked upon like she could move mountains and stars with her bare hands alone.

(this time is no different no matter how broken she feels, surely rearranging constellations wouldn’t be so difficult if she simply tried)

 

ii.

“you look a little sad sitting over here all by your lonesome”

“it’s not quite so terrible these days”

“the lonely part or the sad part?”

“perhaps a bit of both now that you’ve mentioned it”

“I miss your smile”

“my darling, that has always been there for you whenever you wished it”

“doesn’t change how much I miss it”

“that’s truly the worst part of it all, isn’t it?”

-

(there’s a lounge long forgotten by most, tucked deep in the heart of paris that takes its patrons away from the hustle and bustle of the city. a skilled pianist is the usual nightly attraction, sometimes accompanied by a singer that would have given édith piaf a run for her money. the owner is the bartender, pours drinks twice as strong as he should, always keeping a table off to the side of the stage reserved for two despite one seat remaining empty for some time now.)

 

iii.

She was always ruthless before, Nyssa will admit – _reckless_ , she was absolutely _not_.

Her gambit would backfire eventually, this she knew all too well; what Nyssa didn’t account for was just how pathetic it would leave her when it did. She started to play too fast and too strong, accepted drawing her weapon first before considering better options that would be more beneficial to her endgame. Nyssa realized that with half of your plans destroyed, there becomes less of a need to see everything through and more of a want to see everyone else suffer the same fate you have succumbed to.

It leads her to a dark alleyway at three in the morning in the slums of Hong Kong, bleeding a fairly concerning amount from a deep knife wound she sustained after jumping headfirst into a five-on-one fight. She makes a rash decision to take the hit, closing the distance between her and one of the thugs before she can think better of it in order to easily snap his neck. The other five are dead but that doesn’t exactly do Nyssa much good when she might be joining them to her own shallow grave.

Adrenaline pumping through her veins carries Nyssa this far, maybe some feet short of a mile left until she can reach a League safe house that’s run by a local doctor. She uses the wall to hold her fading body upright, frantically gulping in breaths of air to regain what little strength she can. Nyssa looks down at where she’s clutching her side, the wound is gaping and ugly intermingled with scraps of ripped fabric clinging to it. Her hand feels warm from stifling the blood flow while the rest of her extremities get noticeably colder.

In a single effort, Nyssa makes to push off the wall and use the momentum to propel her through the last stretch that’s keeping her from temporary salvation. She falls short, quite literally and quite comically – if she were to be an objective party; the only thing that stops Nyssa’s face from crashing into the cement is a sense of self preservation that’s been drilled into her essence from the moment she was born. Her shoulder takes the brunt of the fall, knocking most of the wind out of her and extinguishing all of her will to give another attempt at making a run ( _brisk walk_ , more accurately) for it.

Nyssa looses a throaty chuckle, reviewing her options as she rests her forehead on the cool ground. She would have never guessed it would be possible for her future to get even more bleak after everything but it would seem the impossible truly is just feats that have yet to be accomplished by humanity.

Every fiber in her being is screaming for a solution: either keep fighting or give up, either one or the other, it doesn’t matter. Just one of them, in full – Nyssa has reason to believe that lingering in between is what’s slowly eating away at her.

Her father’s voice is yelling inside her head, trying to force the fibers in her body to band together and push through looming defeat because she is better than that, her _blood_ is better than that. It yells and yells and yells and still, all Nyssa can manage to do is keep her tight grip onto the gash. Defeat creeps up on her, making its presence more pronounced as each second passes and the strength Nyssa could have used to fight it is used to keep her lungs functioning.

She’s nearing the end of her fight, almost ready to accept that maybe even the heirs of Demons are vulnerable to drawn out, foolish deaths. Nyssa considers dreams she buried but never threw away, thinks of _together_ and _forever_ and _always_ and –

then something (some _one_ ) is tugging at her arm, jostling her injury and sending a sharp, white pain that wakes her up before she’s being dragged by her shoulders.

“Quit blinking at me and help me out a little, you’re really close to being dead weight.”

If Nyssa was at all surprised by her sudden appearance, she gets over it quickly in order to be outraged that she would insult _Nyssa_ , of all people, so crudely. She shoots up into a half sitting position, her good side propping her upper body up to better defend herself.

“I’ll give you a chance to retract your statement, seeing as I was the one who dragged _your_ supposed dead weight all the way back to Nanda Parbat all those years ago – surely you haven’t forgotten that, yet.”

The banter slips out easier than Nyssa feels it should, at least not when moments ago she barely had the energy to think.

“Way to pull out the guilt card right away. Calm down, sassy pants,” she scoffs, “I was having some fun, or have _you_ already forgotten what that’s like?”

(that throws her off, because she hasn’t considered it before but maybe she has forgotten what it’s like to have the weight removed from her chest)

“Really though, baby, you’re gonna have to literally pull some of your own weight. There’s not much left to go but I can’t really do it all on my own.”

When Nyssa looks up at her surroundings again, she’s nearly at the end of the alleyway, the safe house just around the corner if she could just make it. The pain has subsided, becoming more muted even when Nyssa tries to get up again; she makes it onto her knees and pushes up, wobbling slightly before she places an arm around Nyssa’s waist and ducks under her arm to hold her up.

“Up and at ‘em, tiger,” she says softly as she guides Nyssa over to the wall. “You got the rest on your own, alright? I won’t go anywhere, it’s just you have to get there by yourself.”

She fumbles through the open door, into the arms of someone who almost immediately recognizes who she is and her fairly compromised state. The people in the safe house are nothing more than loud, moving blurs before Nyssa decides to close her eyes and block the commotion out.

(the last thing she remembers before everything disappears is a gentle kiss pressed to her temple, _there’s my girl_ whispered quietly into her ear)

 

iv.

(28.7636°N 17.8947°W)

“why’d you pick here?”

“because I like it”

“I’m serious”

“as am I”

“Nyssa”

“if you must know, I detest going back to Starling”

“it doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out”

“maybe not but it is your home, I have been known to make concessions”

“so then why here and not there”

“that grave was made for a girl who was foolishly in love with her sister’s boyfriend, naïve, and unwilling to grow up”

“well, gee, don’t sugar coat it – ”

“that girl thought herself weak, the woman I love is strong, confident, compassionate; here the stars were put in the sky to honor such traits for all of eternity”

“so you’re saying I’m the big dipper?”

“among other things, I’m saying you deserve to be immortalized”

“y’know for all your assassin speak, I hope you realize you’re just a big softy on the inside”

“I’m going to ignore that comment”

-

(“earlier, when you mentioned other things, what were they?”

“the girl in starling never knew me, the one here does”)

 

v.

When the dust finally settles from the aftermath that dealing with Malcolm Merlyn had kicked up, Nyssa is left in Corto Maltese tying up his affairs.

She goes after him personally, after he used Oliver’s sister to do his bidding, after he blackmailed Oliver into claiming guilt and challenging her father to a death match. Nyssa had known that Merlyn was an expert manipulator when he need be, what she noticed about Oliver Queen is that he was an extremely poor liar. 

(if there is one thing she has learned from her, it is that people will go to the ends of the earth, through heaven and hell and back to save someone they love dearly)

There is too much ire in his eyes, too much deep seated hatred in his being to lie smoothly when the person he is sacrificing himself for is his beloved sister and Nyssa can see through his act as soon as he comes storming through the League’s doors. Her father agrees to give Oliver a chance to come clean before his death if he proves worthy of such mercy, should he provide the League with information that could lead to Merlyn her father would accept the admission as penance for Oliver’s actions.

The Arrow fights valiantly, though somewhat bullish because both brother and sister’s lives are on the line; the ceremonial blade slices clean through his body when he finally falls to his knees and he looks into the eyes of the Demon, caught between fighting a losing battle and admitting defeat. It’s in that moment her father asks for the truth. Thinking his demise imminent and his sister safe, he looks straight into Nyssa’s eyes and grits out _he killed her_ through painfully clenched teeth.

They take him to their healers afterwards, most of his injuries minor aside from the stab wound; her father knew as well as Nyssa did that Oliver’s nature would have betrayed him. He’s to remain in Nanda Parbat for the following weeks, until he’s healed under the League’s protection. She remembers to call Felicity to inform Oliver’s team that although he may not be well yet, he is still very much alive. If Oliver’s near dying testimony wasn’t enough for Nyssa to come for Merlyn’s head, Felicity’s inability to keep from rambling is what signs his death warrant.

Nyssa goes off alone to settle both blood debts personally, so that there is no mistake of who is ending _Al Sa-Her_ and what grievances he has been found guilty of – the details of her pursuit menial when he drops all subtleties once Oliver is presumed dead. The only thing that carries any significance is that she defeats him at the docks she once used, a fitting backdrop to her story’s end.

(she promises Oliver’s sister – Thea, is her name – that she would not mention the attempt on Nyssa’s life, before she realized what her father had used her for, to anyone)

The mansion he owned on the island is overzealous, though the balcony offers a breathtaking view of the sunset. Nyssa is trapped in her own thoughts when she comes to her side, forcing her arm through Nyssa’s crossed ones to hang onto her.

“It’s over now,” she says with a hint of disbelief. Nyssa figures part of her is still waiting for the other foot to drop and someone else to come out of the woodwork claiming something that sends her on another set of wild-goose chases.

“Nice, isn’t it?”

“Are you referring to the sunset or my quest for vengeance finally completed?”

“Perhaps a bit of both now that you’ve mentioned it.”

She has a smug look on her face having used Nyssa’s line back at her, proud that she found a way to do so. Nyssa nods her head in resignation although she doesn’t manage to completely hide the smile that threatens. “It would appear that I have to concur with your conclusion.”

“There goes my smile I’ve been waiting for.”

“I’ve told you before, all you needed was to ask.”

“But I love the ones I don’t ask for more.”

It’s amazing how she can look over and find everything she has missed so terribly all this time, not a single nuance out of place. She hasn’t forgotten anything about her, not her smile or the twinkle in her eye whenever she’s happy. Nyssa can remember the way she says her name, how her lips feel on hers, the outline of her shadow on the ground, the feeling of her hand fitting neatly into hers. The exact blue of her eyes, the highlights in her hair, but – 

“Tell me what’s going on up there,” she implores, breaking Nyssa out of her reverie, “it made you stop smiling.”

“I – ( _need you, miss you, love you_ ) – can’t remember how I felt without you.“ 

“That’s all?”

She blinks at her, once, twice, then nods slowly.

“You don’t have to worry about that, you big sap. I’m not going anywhere.”

(she believes she deserves to be placed in the sky, to be remembered for lifetimes beyond hers, until she realizes that for something to be remembered it must first be forgotten)


End file.
